Canada COVID-19 Trend

Data Sources:

Data version: 2020-12-20

Canada COVID-19 case growth rate compared to other countries

When aligned by the first day since the 100th case in each country, the total confirmed case number of all the countries grow similarly except for a few: it follows a steep exponential growth at the early stage which is resulted from an unhampered epidemic spread, gradually slows down after various countermeasures are taken by the governments and eventually goes to flat when the situation is under control.

Countries that are successful in the early prevention and control, like Japan and Singapore, show a much shallower growth with time; South Korea experienced a rapid growth at the early stage but managed to flatten out the curve very quick by an aggressive 'trace, test and treat' strategy. However, recently, many countries has experienced a second wave of growth.

Canada case number grows slowly after a huge increase in Spring.

Exponential projection of Canada case growth and the impact of the countermeasures

Since Canada is still at the exponential growth period, an exponential projection provides a good short-term forecast. In the following chart, the next 5 day's case number is projected based on the exponential growth of the previous 5 day's actual case numbers. The different countermeasures taken by the government are timelined on the chart to monitor their impacts on the growth.

After reaching 1000 cases, the growth rate of Canada is actually not very different from the growth rate of many other countries when they had a similar number of cases. The plot below shows the growth curve of Canada vs US, Italy, Korean and China after other countries' dates are backshifted. The trajectories of those countries provide different scenaria on the long term case growth in Canada.

Projected case number in the next 5 days:

Date December 18 December 19 December 20 December 21 December 22 December 23 December 24 December 25
Actual 495,345 501,592 507,799
Projection 494,915 501,490 508,153 514,904 521,745 528,677 535,701 542,818
Daily Adds 6,707 6,247 6,207
Projected Adds 6,489 6,575 6,663 6,751 6,841 6,932 7,024 7,117

Canada daily case increase

COVID-19 cases by province

Long Term Outlook

Three scenarios from CIDRAP 2020